Having run many of these tournaments in the past, (including two that are ongoing), I can attest to how difficult it can be to complete a field. It's very important to do so before recruiting begins and coaches start to fill their schedules.

When you still need one more team and 1) some coaches don't check their sitemail, even when I remind them in their conference forum; 2) some coaches aren't interested, but don't tell me; 3) some coaches say 'yes', then change to 'no'... well, .I've done the same thing as hackerhog. I've issued invites to 3-4 teams and accepted the first one to respond. It's not frustrating to fill a tournament, it just takes a little work with a short deadline.

It looks like the Yarnell has another great field. I'm looking forward to seeing it

sorry I couldn't help, hacker - I just felt like it would be signing up for a suicide mission after losing 6 seniors. The Yarnell does look to have excellent teams, as always. I'm sure I'll be interested in coming seasons.

Here's the deal. The assumption is all the teams that qualify for this tournament are solid recruiters or else they wouldn't be here. I sitemail and post on coach's corner the day of recruiting. If you are recruiting, you should notice this. Once recruiting starts, that's when teams start filling their schedules and the hope is to have this tournament squared away that first day. As recruiting goes along this tournament loses candidates who are on the outside looking in if they start filling their non-conference slots. And it seems it always comes down to one team. And it's not necessarily the same team. But teams who have accepted bids start getting antsy and measures have to be taken to fill this tournament up without scheduling conflicts.

So I can't emphasize this enough. If you want to play this (or any other tournament), before you start recruiting, check the dynasty rankings or the Iba board for this tournament thread to see if your team is mentioned. If bid is offered, let me know asap. If you are on the fringe of getting a bid, hold off on scheduling 5-9 and pay attn to your site mail and coach's corner. You may get an invite.

In the past it's gotten out of hand if we let this linger for days.

So I'll probably do more of what we did this year in inviting teams I've had good relationships with in the past to fill unanswered bids. Not probably, but I will. I really am stoked about this field.

(I need to be stoked about something right now because D1 Virginia Tech just poached a MONSTER Juco PG from me on the very last cycle. MONSTER PG.)

I want to apologize to the yarnell participants. I hadn't planned on moving when I accepted the bid but things changed throughout the season. That said, I'm glad a proven coach will be leading Stanislaus into this years tourney

no problem bvb. If you only knew how it all came together for your invitation. I'm driving to my daughter's ball game about 2 hours away. I text mduncanhogs to ask if the field was full. He said no, still need one more. So we trade texts and come up with the idea to see what good coaches are out there who had bandwidth in games 5-10. He found you you. A few texts later he said you were in. And the tournament was full before I got to my daughter's game.

Lesson?

Don't text-and-drive unless you are trying to fill the last spot in your make believe tournament in your make believe basketball league.

Just noticed the CVAC has won 4 of the last 8 Yarnells. With St Marys TX and Harding splitting the other 4. Longwood took 3 of those CVAC wins. No CVAC team this year. Gotta think St Marys TX or Harding is the favorite this year.

Thanks hacker. Seattle gave us all we could handle last night and we barely won in OT. Happy to make it through this very tough field undefeated. I'm sure going to miss Terry Coombs when he graduates, but I'm sure the rest of you won't.